Because I was standing there with my mouth open, “I suppose you’re worried about her escaping,” Blenkins guessed incorrectly. “My aunt Hermione got to be a problem in her later years and stayed in a room in the subcellar on her bad days. There are no windows, so no need for bars.”

  “Sir,” I said, “if you’re willing to do this in any fashion, I’ll be eternally grateful. I just hope that this won’t cause problems for you in the future.”

  “Pilkey is threatening all of Mindoro with his antics,” Blenkins said. “The Shinings will send in troops as long as there are riots against them. We’ve got too big a population for them to actually conquer us, but they can make Mindoro ungovernable. Chaos will suit them. It doesn’t suit them now.

  “The only plan for Mindoro is to stay quiet and unite internally. We haven’t been able to do that in five hundred years, but I think that with the Shinings as a common enemy, we’ll be able to at last.”

  I nodded solemnly to Blenkins. I liked the little fellow and he was certainly doing me a favor at considerable risk to himself, but I didn’t think his vision of Mindoro’s future was a very likely one.

  “In any case,” Blenkins said, “making a public fool of Pilkey makes it more difficult for him to win over the weak-minded people who’ve been gulled by his message of violent opposition to the Shinings. If I become associated with that humiliation, so much the better.”

  I suspected Blenkins was wrong about having more guards in his townhouse being enough to stop a raid like the one we’d carried out on the Garden House. On the other hand, I was sure that Pilkey didn’t have anyone on his payroll as skilled and ruthless as Joss.

  “Sir, if you’re really willing to do this,” I said, “I’ll bring the girl in now. She’s just out in the vehicle.”

  Blenkins murmured a word to a pair of his guards and they went out with me. At the doorway I turned and said, “Thank you, again, sir.”

  Now I needed to carry out the actual negotiation. But before I did that, I would shower and change into dress clothes. My clothing hadn’t suffered too badly during the raid, but the bitter hint of phosphorous might be enough to remind Lord Pilkey of what I’d been doing.

  I decided that on balance, that wouldn’t be politic.

  * * *

  I took a leisurely shower, then dressed in my blue frock coat and tight red slacks. It was probably out of date on Xenos but it had been high formal fashion when I lifted from Cinnabar.

  I went over to the transportation bay. Kent and Bertie stood by the trike. That wasn’t a huge surprise, but half a dozen other spacers were there also. I knew Joyeuse and Witmer but I couldn’t have put names to the others. There was something in the cargo compartment.

  Everybody stood stiffly as I approached. Kent was wearing a civilian business suit which I recognized as one of mine, though it must have been extensively tailored to fit him.

  I looked at the cargo compartment. The lid had been removed so that someone could sit upright on the cushioned seat that had been built in.

  “What the hell is this?” I said loudly enough to be heard by all of them because I didn’t have any idea as to who was in charge.

  “You’re not dressed to drive,” Kent said. “I’m going to take you to Lord Pilkey.”

  “So we added a seat,” Witmer said. “Wasn’t no trouble.”

  I opened my mouth to ask who had told them I was going to see Lord Pilkey, then shut it again. I hadn’t said a word about my plans; it was my duty to keep everyone else out of it—especially at this stage.

  But these were senior people. They were used to not being told anything by their superiors—but being held responsible for whatever went wrong. They watched the man in charge and knew to anticipate what was going to happen next.

  I shut my mouth and nodded. “Then let’s get on with it,” I said.

  “The boarding ladder’s on the starboard side,” Witmer said.

  I walked around the vehicle. I’d thought I was going to have to hoist myself into the box which would be a bitch of a job in tight formal clothes, but again the crew had been there before me. I wondered if that was Mahaffy’s suggestion; he’d laid out the suit for me.

  A three-step boarding stool pivoted out from the top of the compartment. I wondered if they would return the vehicle to its original condition.

  Kent kicked the engine to life and boarded. “You ready, sir?” he asked.

  I looked at the spacers surrounding the vehicle. “Thank you all, shipmates,” I said.

  I heard cheers behind me as we motored across the boarding bridge. I found that I was a little choked up. I guess that was better than worrying about the coming interview, as I’d expected I’d be doing.

  * * *

  The Pilkey mansion must have been on the northern side of Keelung when the town was founded, but development had enveloped it in the years since. It was still an extensive walled compound, however, and I suspected that the double row of townhouses on the western edge—within the line of the original masonry boundary wall—were occupied by Lord Pilkey’s retainers and their families.

  Kent pulled up in the broad carriage circle curving into the front wall of the property. He hopped off the saddle and dropped the boarding steps before I could figure out where the release was.

  A concierge in red with maroon piping called through the gate of vertical iron rods, “Lord Pilkey isn’t receiving!”

  I wandered up to the gate anyway. “I hope he’ll see me,” I said to the concierge. “I’m Lord Harry Harper, and I’ve come about the interests of Lady Ophelia Pilkey.”

  Instead of answering, the concierge backed away to an intercom on the masonry gatepost. Because he kept his eyes on me rather than speaking directly at the unit, I heard him say, “Sir? There’s a toff here saying it’s about Ophelia. Says his name’s Lord Harper.”

  The speaker gave a crackle of sound though I couldn’t make out the words. The concierge came toward me and said, “There’s somebody coming from the house, sir. It’ll just be a minute.”

  A man in slacks and a sweater stepped around the gatepost. Though he wasn’t wearing a uniform, his automatic carbine was standard military issue. I nodded politely to him and he vanished back behind the solid wall.

  A four-seat runabout came around the back of the distant house and ran up to the gate. The driver was a slim man of fifty. He pulled up behind the concierge and said, “Get the postern open, Brevoort. Now!”

  The concierge finished unlatching the pedestrian gate set in the left gate leaf. He pulled it open for me and jumped back out of the way so that I could step through.

  The slim man offered his hand. “Lord Harper, we’re pleased to see you. I’m Hagen, a consultant to Lord Pilkey. Allow me to run you up to the house.”

  I got into the passenger side of the runabout. “How long have you worked for Lord Pilkey?”

  Hagen turned the runabout in a tight circle and started back to the house. “Technically,” he said, “for about three weeks, but I only arrived on Mindoro two days ago. Lord Pilkey realized that he needed someone on his staff with off-planet security experience, but he decided to go ahead with already-planned operations in the interim.”

  I laughed. “I regret you didn’t arrive last month,” I said. “Though I’m pleased that you hadn’t shaped up operations at the Garden House before the other night.”

  We pulled up at the front door. “I’ll take you through to where his lordship is waiting,” Hagen said. I was surprised that he’d given his name, and that it wasn’t Smith or the like.

  “May I ask, Lord Harper?” Hagen said as he reached for the latchplate. “What are your regular duties on the Far Traveller?”

  “I’m a biologist, sir,” I said. My guide simply nodded. I didn’t know whether he believed me or not.

  We entered a larger room than the entrance hall of Blenkins House. This one had a double-height ceiling. The squad inside were in sweaters and slacks like the six or seven of them I’d seen at the gate over my shoulder. I’d looked as we came up the drive.

  These also had submachine guns and carbines. Their caliber as individuals didn’t impress me, but there were a lot of them.

  “Come on through if you please, Lord Harper,” Hagen said. We went through the door into a study where a heavy man of sixty waited standing behind a desk. The door closed.

  “Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my daughter?” snarled the man behind the desk—Lord Pilkey.

  “I’m Lord Harry Harper,” I said. “A Harper of Greenslade, and a friend of Lieutenant Grenville. If you check on us, you’ll learn that the Harpers keep their word.”

  Pilkey glared at Hagen and said, “Colonel? You looked ’em up, right?”

  “Yes,” said Hagen. “The statement is true. May I say that there’s very little information about Lord Harry himself, and certainly nothing to suggest that he’d be in this room now.”

  “On the word of a Harper, Lord Pilkey,” I said, “as soon as Lieutenant Grenville is released, Lady Ophelia will be released.”

  “This lieutenant is nothing to do with me!” Pilkey shouted. “You’ll give my daughter back unharmed or you’ll bloody well regret it!”

  “If Rick is not released…,” I said. My mouth was dry and I was speaking very slowly and distinctly. “You risk having a friend return from Xenos and telling you that he met your daughter in a brothel outside Harbor Three. That’s on my oath also.”

  “Do you think you’re going to get out of here until I say so?” Pilkey said. His face had been red when I entered the room and when he started shouting, it darkened to maroon. “Unless you return my daughter instantly, I’ll have pieces cut off your body until there’s nothing left to send back to your ship!”

  “During the troubles on Cinnabar during the late war,” I said, nodding to Hagen, “two of my father’s innocent cousins were seized and tortured to death in an attempt to locate friends of theirs—who were involved in the conspiracy. I suspect Colonel Hagen can tell you how that worked out for the torturers and the men behind them. But if you think the best way to get your daughter back is by torturing me, then you’d best get started.”

  “Lord Pilkey,” Hagen said, “I do know the story. And Lord Harper’s father was involved in the retribution.”

  Pilkey swallowed. “How do I know you’ll let Ophelia go?” he said in a choking voice.

  “Sir,” I said, “you have my word. I’ll bring her here to this mansion.”

  Pilkey collapsed backward into his chair. “I’ll give orders,” he said. “It’ll take time, though. Maybe a day.”

  “I understand, sir,” I said. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  I turned. Colonel Hagen opened the door and escorted me through the foyer. As we got out of the runabout at the gate, I offered my hand.

  “I’m very glad to have met you, sir,” I said.

  “I’m glad that things worked out as they did,” he said as we shook. “It’s the next best thing to having arrived in time to stop it from happening.”

  * * *

  Kent burbled all the way back to the ship, but I only replied with a few grunts. I was trying to come to terms with the fact that I was still alive.

  * * *

  Rick had been unable to sleep except fitfully since his captors shackled him the day before, but he’d managed to drop off finally within the hour so the ruckus didn’t itself rouse him. Blackbeard jerked him upright and shouted, “Come on! Get up, and you better not slow us down!”

  “Boss, maybe it’s just Willie!” the red-haired guard said.

  “No, it’s too bloody big!” said Blackbeard. “Move, you! And you better hope it’s not your buddies coming to rescue you or they’ll find your brains smeared all over the canes!”

  Now that he was coming awake, Rick heard the throb of a large engine. He stumbled in the direction Blackbeard had shoved him, though for the life of him he couldn’t imagine how they were going to get out of the sight of anyone landing on the shore.

  For the life of him was the right word. He could well believe that Blackbeard would shoot him rather than surrender him to a party of armed spacers. Though how would Captain Bolton have figured out where he was being held?

  Rick squeezed as far into the cane as he could get; his body was off the cleared path at least. He could still see the edge of the beach. His two junior captors had run back into the hut, but Blackbeard was right beside Rick with a pistol in Rick’s ear.

  The nose of a flat-bottomed boat slid up on the mud. It was at least ten feet across, wider than the skiff that brought Rick was long. A man jumped down into the mud and called, “Arno! We gotta leave soonest! Arno, it’s Willie! Come on out and bring the prisoner!”

  Another man jumped to the ground. He was slender and fit looking. “Master Arno, my name is Hagen and Lord Pilkey has put me in charge of this business. Come out at once. We need to get back to Keelung without delay.”

  “I never heard of you,” Arno said peevishly.

  “We can take care of that later,” Hagen said. He pointed at the younger of Blackbeard’s two flunkies. “Get the shackles off him. Now.”

  Willie pulled Blackbeard—Arno—aside and was whispering to him. The flunky ran into the hut and came back with keys looped on a bright green cord. He was coming toward Rick with them when Arno suddenly shouted.

  He turned toward Rick and said, “You bastard! Your buddies killed my brother!”

  “Arno!” Hagen said. “Drop that now!”

  “Like hell I will!” Arno said. He swung his pistol’s butt at Rick’s head. Rick’s wrists were still taped but he got his arms up in time to protect his temple. The blow knocked him to the ground.

  Hagen shot Arno twice, high in the chest. Arno sank to his knees and fell over backward. Hagen shot again, this time upward through the throat into the big man’s brain.

  The canes drank the triple crack of the electromotive pistol. The puffs of vaporized driving band drifted away when Hagen lowered the weapon, its muzzle glowing faintly red.

  “Get the shackles off him,” he repeated to the boy with the keys.

  Hagen opened a folding knife with his left hand and knelt to cut the tape between Rick’s wrists. Close up, he was older than Rick had thought. As he rose to his feet, he said, “I suggest you wait to remove the tape until you can soak it with alcohol for ten or fifteen minutes.”

  The shackles clicked and fell way from Rick’s legs. He stood up. He’d have a bad bruise on his forearm where he’d blocked the pistol butt, but the bone wasn’t broken.

  “Thank you,” he said to Hagen.

  The pistol had cooled enough for Hagen to replace it in the holster at the small of his back. He nodded to Rick and said to the others, “Come on, let’s get back to Keelung.”

  “Sir?” said Willie. He glanced down. “What about the boss?”

  Hagen said, “Does Mindoro have crabs? I suppose there’ll be something. Leave Arno for them.”

  Then he said, “Arno stopped being the boss when Lord Pilkey put me in charge.”

  Rick, limping slightly, followed Hagen to the boat. He was glad the crew still aboard the boat had slung a boarding ladder so that he didn’t have to heave himself up unaided.

  * * *

  I’d showered and was dressing for dinner in utilities when someone rapped on the cabin door. “Come on in,” I said, figuring it was Mahaffy come to pick up the dress clothes lying on the bed. That outfit had turned out to be much more useful than I’d decided on my first day aboard the Far Traveller.

  Joss entered. I hadn’t seen her since before I drove the trike myself to Blenkins House. I’d been a little surprised, now that I thought about it, that she hadn’t been around to see me off to Pilkey’s with Kent.

  She may have slept for the past two days, for all I knew. I’d been really stressed by the raid on the Garden House and she’d done a lot more than I had.

  “I thought I’d check how things went with Colonel Hagen, sir,” she said.

  “Come on in,” I said. She closed the cabin door behind her.

  “You know Colonel Hagen, then?” I said as I finished closing the seam of my shirt. I couldn’t imagine what she was doing here.

  “Not to speak to,” she said. “Heyer’s briefing officer was always somebody from the Fifth Bureau. Never Hagen that I know about, but I saw him around a time or two.”

  She cleared her throat and added, looking into the corner of the cabin, “I was glad when I saw him come to the gate for you. It meant the adults were in charge. I didn’t know what a rich dickwad like Pilkey was going to do.”

  “I was glad that the colonel was present also,” I said. “The conversation—the negotiation—was conducted in a very reasonable fashion. To my great relief. Rick will return as quickly as possible, and Lady Ophelia will go back to her father.”

  “Figured it must’ve gone okay,” Joss said, “when I saw the colonel go off with half a dozen yobs in Pilkey’s big boat. They must’ve stuck Lieutenant Grenville somewhere offshore, which is why we didn’t find him in the Garden House.”

  “You were watching the whole time?” I said. “I didn’t see you at the Pilkey mansion.”

  Joss shrugged. “Don’t guess the colonel did neither,” she said, “or I likely wouldn’t be talking to you now. I sure as hell wasn’t looking forward to going in after you if you hadn’t come back under your own steam.”

  “There was no need to do that!” I said. “That was a private business of my own, nothing involving the Far Traveller or the Republic of Cinnabar.”

  “There was every bloody reason, sir!” Joss said. It was the first time I’d heard her sound angry. “You’re one of the good ones, El-Tee. I wasn’t going to let you throw yourself away because you were too proud to ask for backup.”

  My tongue seemed dry and swollen. I wanted to speak, though I didn’t know what to say and couldn’t have gotten it out anyway.

  “I guess now that it’s settling down,” Joss said, “I better tell the colonel where the charges are under the wall. But I think I’ll wait till Lieutenant Grenville is back. Just to be sure.”